We play on too high levels and make big moves with no hand. At the end we lose our whole bank. Everyone was a donk in the beginning. Many people think that players like Gus Hansen, Phil Hellmuth or Doyle Brunson win just because they are lucky and it is easy to be just like them. But when they face the ugly truth and lose some bankrolls they give up.

The hard thing is to realize what you do wrong and stop your loses. Here are the main things which I had to improve in order to stop losing at online poker.

Your Poker Strategy Sucks

You have read some poker strategy articles and you think you’ve done it all. It is simply not enough. You need to make summaries of your play every day. Good players always check the hands they’ve played after a session. This is very important for you. You will see so many mistakes that you overlooked just because you were under pressure. So, improving your poker strategy will take effect and you will see that you will be more comfortable against good players.

Is your Bankroll Enough for the Limit?

I have written an article about bankroll management but I still make the mistake to raise the limit without checking my bankroll. Bankroll management will help you a lot just because it makes people overcome their loses a lot easier. Just an example: If your bank is $500, you sit on 2 $1/2 tables with full stakes of $200 and you hit two bad runs on both tables and lose $400 it will mean that you just lost 80% of your whole bankroll. This will lead to a huge tilt and in most cases loss of the whole bankroll.

Should I take a break?

Many players sit on the poker table when they are not in a good mental condition – they had problems at work, they are too nervous or too tired. In situations like that you can not make good moves. The best thing to do is – just don’t play. Take a break, relax and then return to the tables.

The number one reason for going on tilt is a bad beat or losing a hand in which you are a big favorite. Let’s say are dealt KK and after raising the pot you go all-in on the turn and a single opponent calls with 10 10 on a 2 3 9 J board.

You see you are a huge favorite and expect winning a big pot. But the river comes 10 and your opponent hits one of his two outs. This is what I call a bad beat! Now, in situations like this one most of the inexperienced players would be tilting.

In this case the reason behind the tilt is the big loss of money. And it is also the major reason why people lose focus on the game and lose more money.

In conditions like this you will play more aggressively and you will bluff more. But why do we do this when playing on tilt? We try to make a couple of quick successful moves which can win our money back. In the most cases such moves end up with losing our whole stack on the table or in the worst scenario – the whole bankroll.

But what can we do to avoid situations like this? As we said tilt is an emotional state of mind. As such it should be handled in a different way. I mean changing the strategy or telling yourself to play logically won’t help at all.

What you should do is – always be prepared that you can lose a big hand and in the moment it happens take control on your mind. Sit out from the table, call a friend and go for a walk. If you like it, run in the park or inside the nearest stadium. You will see how it feels when you get back – it will feel a lot different, it will feel better.

So the only thing which can beat your tilt is your mind. If you learn how to control yourself emotionally and how to get out from emotional breakdowns you will learn how to avoid tilt.

In Pot Limit Omaha you can only bet the pot size which is a prerequisite for many players entering the pot preflop.

Depending on the players count on the flop and the board you decide whether your aces are good or not. Bad players do not take care of these two major factors and fire another barrel.

Let’s check an example. You hold A♠A♥5♦7♣ and make a pot raise preflop from the button. This is a pretty standard play. Don’t forget your hand isn’t that strong – you have pocket Aces, but your cards are not suited and also not connected. But still it is a very good starting hand. You can check the best starting hands in Omaha Hi here.

So let’s continue with the hand. You get 3 callers preflop. The flop comes 5♣6♣J♦ and it is checked to you on the button.

In this moment a weak player would say: “Well, I have an overpair and I feel comfortable with it. I will bet.” Betting is OK to me if you were heads-up. In a situation with 3 other players you might be already beat on the flop against set for example. If not, there is a big chance for you to get called on a big draw and if a scary card comes on the turn you have to give up the hand.

What should you do? You have to check here, because if you try to get the pot here you risk to get check/raised. And it is a big risk because you have 3 players in the pot and also a straight and a flush draws. Since the flop didn’t hit you, you have to give up the hand if you don’t improve on the turn and if another player bets.

But the main problem isn’t that you could not hit the flop, it is that you have no real draws. Every time you make a continuation bet into a multiway pot you have to take care about the draws on the board. This will save you a lot of money.

Examples of Min-Raising

Actually, I decided to write this article because of a PL Omaha hand I recently played and I can’t stop thinking about it. You will see the cards on the board and my hand too but I will post my opponent’s hand after that.

I was dealt:

3♠ 4♥ A♥ Q♣

The flop came:

9♠ 2♥ K♥

My opponent made a pot-sized bet and I made a call. The turn came:

8 ♥

This is the critical point where my opponent made another pot-sized bet and I made a missclick and min-raised him on the best hand possible – Ace high flush. Of course the villain made a call and the turn came:

2 ♣

Yeah, you guessed it right – the worst thing I could see – paired board. I was mad about it because at the time I made the min-raise I actually wanted to make a pot-sized bet. Of course it doesn’t necessarily mean that my opponent would throw away his hand but this was the right thing I had to do. And in the end I have to tell you he had K2 which makes a full house and he won the hand.

Bluffing with a Minimum Raise in PL Omaha

Attention, do not bluff with a min-raise in Pot Limit Omaha. You won’t scare anyone. Because Omaha is a game of the draws, meaning that your opponent could hold a good drawing hand and even if he doesn’t hold the best hand he would call you just because he has the right pot odds.

Orders Placed on Hold

After collecting some points I selected a black Full Tilt t-shirt with a “Got Tilt?” logo on it and made an order. This was in the beginning of April. My last order from the Full Tilt Store came in 2 weeks and I live in Europe. It was a very fast delivery. This time I have waited more than 2 months and I have not received my t-shirt. I went to the local post to ask if they had my delivery but the answer was negative. I decided to write an e-mail to Full Tilt if they have some information about that. They answered me in 2 weeks and informed me that because of the recent events all pending orders were placed on hold.

The good news was that the guys from Full Tilt recently began to ship orders to their clients. Well, we hope our deliveries will come soon.

Compared to short handed games, full ring or normal ring games have 10 players. This fact leads to a big difference between these two types of tables. You will now see why and after reading this article you will be able to decide which table type fits you and your poker style.

Short Handed Poker

As we already said, in short handed poker games there are normally 6 players sitting on the table. This means that the blinds will move faster than if you play full ring table. This is the main reason that makes short handed poker much faster than full ring poker.

Stealing The Blinds

We mentioned that the blinds at a short handed table come around much faster compared to full ring tables. This fact makes stealing the blinds a key strategy when playing short handed. Stealing the blinds is so important because it will bring a large part of your profit when playing short handed.

If you play in position, you can try to steal the blinds with a wide range of hands like K9 suited J10 offsuit for example or any suited connectors. But of course everything depends on the read on your opponents. The idea behind the stealing the blind is to make your opponent’s decision harder because if he makes a call to your raise preflop he will be out of position postflop.

Full Ring Tables

On the full ring tables there is no such action as in the short handed games. The blinds move slower which means that your hand selection can be a lot better.

Another positive thing when playing full ring tables is that you have more time to decide what to do because the action is slower. Playing full ring poker games also helps you to learn how to play on multiple tables.

Maybe it is better for you to try playing two tables at once because you will be able to play more hands which of course means more action.

Decide Which Table Type is Better For You

Full ring or 6-max poker games? You have to try both table types first and then you can decide which one is better for you. I think playing on full ring tables is great for beginners who start to learn poker strategies. If you are one of them improve your skills on the full ring tables and then switch to the 6-max tables. You will see the difference.

Omaha High Stakes Games Still Go On

Despite the fact U.S. based poker players have been blocked from main poker rooms, the Omaha High Stakes games continue to be very interesting. In the month of May, Patrik Antonius made some epic victories like the one when he made a $900K profit against Rui Cao and Gus Hansen.

The $100k Super High Roller

A big event took place at Bellagio where 29 players entered the $100K buy-in tournament. Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, Barry Greenstein, Mike Sexton, Antonio Esfandiari were the most famous players at the event. In the heads-up battle, Erik Seidel won against Erick Lindgren and took more than $1 million.

First of all you have to know that on these limits you will find weak players that will call your raises on every streets just because they chase a draw having bad pot odds. Isn’t this great? Well, many players claim that these limits are very hard to beat because of the “luck” factor. In this article you will find tips which will help you to make a profitable play on the micro limits.

Don’t Bluff Too Much

This is maybe the number 1 mistake at the micro stakes tables. Many players on these limits think that their middle pair is good enough and will call your bets to the end.

Bet Big With a Big Hand

As we already mentioned, on the micro limits you will find many players in the pot even if you have raised preflop. This is good for you – if you want to get your good hands well paid, make strong bets. This is how you should build your big stack on the table.

The player on focus today is the remarkable Gus Hansen. The Great Dane is known for his stone cold face and ultra aggressive poker style.

Gustav “Gus” Hansen was born in 1974 just outside Copenhagen, Denmark, and as a child he used to play tennis and soccer. It was the time when he began with his big wins – he became an youth tennis champion, as well as a world-class backgammon player.

In 1993, Gus Hansen moved to Santa Cruz, California, where he continued his education as an exchange student. He started playing poker at the local casino.

Hansen holds a record with his four World Poker Tour (WPT) titles. His tournament winnings are over $9 million.

Nowadays Gus Hansen is playing mostly online on the high stakes tables at Full Tilt Poker. He prefers playing Pot Limit Omaha and makes huge profit.

On Friday, April 15, now known as the Black Friday the U.S. Department of Justice charged the principals of the poker sites with money laundering, bank fraud and illegal gambling. Some hours later, the world’s largest online poker room PokerStars blocked U.S.-based players from their site.

But what happened with the millions of dollars which were blocked for the U.S.-based players? In the end of April, the U.S. Department of Justice made an agreement with Full Tilt and PokerStars to release their domain names so the U.S.-based players are now able to login to their accounts and cash out their money.

PokerStars made a statement, in which they explained that the agreement with the U.S. Attorney will allow them to pay out their customers in the USA. Few days after, PokerStars announced that they finally made an agreement with an U.S. bank and started the withdrawal process to U.S. players.

Full Tilt still try to resolve some issues with the U.S. Government of Justice before accepting withdrawal requests from U.S.-based poker players.

The high stakes games on Full Tilt and PokerStars took a big hit after Black Friday. However, some of the high stakes players like Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius and Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies continued their battle mainly on the PL Omaha Hi tables.